Plasmas Can't Hide From Neutralized TIDE

Plasmas Can't Hide From Neutralized TIDE

November 20, 1996Ever
had to fight your laundry, hot from the dryer, as static buildup makes it
billow and fly away? Space scientists have had a similar problem in trying
to measure plasmas - electrified gases - in outer space.

To beat the space equivalent of static buildup, scientists at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center built a special instrument for the Polar spacecraft
and discovered that "empty"space above the north and south poles
actually is filled by supersonic fountains of oxygen, hydrogen, and helium.

Space is not entirely empty. It is filled with wisps of plasmas, electrified
gases. But instruments on Earth-orbit satellites reported no plasmas were
in the space above Earth's.

Until Marshall scientists developed the Thermal Ion Dynamics Experiment
(TIDE) instrument for Polar. TIDE neutralizes the satellite's own static
buildup so it can measure all but the lowest energy plasmas in space.

And that is leading to important understandings of how the Earth and Sun
work together to give us dazzling light shows or leave us completely in
the dark.